The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020) Review

This article contains light spoilers

The Trial of the Chicago 7 is entertaining and engaging from start to finish but still falls into the general Hollywood stigma of humanizing good versus evil characteristics. Writer/Director Aaron Sorkin helps his movie mirror today’s political climate by using his energetic and prodigious dialogue skills to recreate a polarizing event in U.S. history.

One can tell from the moment the film begins the government is using this case as a political stunt to make an example out of what they categorize as violent protestors or rioters. While one can feel the extreme bias from the setting of the courtroom to the framing of the story itself, Frank Langella as Judge Julius Hoffman has an extraordinary performance in not only showing extreme racist bias towards the defense but also his ignorance in believing he is acting in good faith of the rule of law.

There’s a scene in this movie where Bobby Seale, played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, is bound and gagged for continuously speaking “out of turn” after being charged multiple times for “contempt of court”. The scene is powerful and sends the racist message against the judge as it’s intended to be, but for some reason Sorkin feels only moments of this event are sufficient for the story. But once the viewer looks up the true events, they will learn Bobby Seale was bound for three days before he was granted a mistrial.

Now I understand that nobody wants to see that, but it’s 2020 and there’s no reason why Sorkin can’t add that effect to show it like it is, especially with what’s going on now in today’s climate. It has been reported this script was written before the writer’s strike in 2008, so there was more than enough time to adjust the script. Or maybe the original script did have the incident happen for three days but after ten years of possible rewrites, it’s not the end product. Yeah, we’ve got this whole moment with Bobby but I can’t help but feel like this is just Hollywood trying to show us that yea this white man is racist, but he surely can’t be that racist.

This is when Hollywood tries to show us that even though this is taking place in the past, they want us, the viewer, to feel like surely there’s at least one person that can’t be this racist.  So you want this person to exist in the 60s, in the 50s, in the 1800s or during slavery, but did this character actually exist? Did this one righteous person, that you would want to step up and say something against the racist antagonist, actually do the thing the movie depicts them of doing? Why do we continuously need this type of whitewashing? Can’t we just film what actually happened? Can’t we get 5-10 minutes of Bobby strapped up to show the horror that he and everybody went through in the courtroom instead of focusing on a white guy not standing up when the judge leaves?  Maybe that’s one of the reasons why the film has such a fast pace.

Sorkin ensures the polarization continues throughout the film, even at the expense of adding fictional storylines. We’re not focusing on one polarizing event. In order to emphasize how the judge would not allow Seale to represent himself, Sorkin adds the head of the Black Panthers Fred Hampton, played by Kelvin Harrison Jr, to sit behind and whispering to Seale but that never happened.

While these are my main critiques on the film, I can’t deny this is also one of the best movies released this year. If it was any other year, I believe this would’ve kick started this year’s awards chatter. Everyone in this film is firing off on all cylinders and there will most likely be multiple supporting role nominations when the time comes. Sacha Baron Cohen, Mark Rylance, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Frank Langella and Michael Keaton all deserve nominations and this is Cohen’s best performance. There’s also a big chance Sorkin gets nominated for both best adapted screenplay and best director.

Sorkin did a great job at adapting a real life event and making it feel current and relatable.  There’s a part in the film where Sacha Baron Cohen’s character says “this is a political trial” and it is. The film has many layers and one of them is this philosophical debate on if this is all for show or if justice is in fact being served and Sorkin makes clear which side of the aisle he falls on.

Hear my full spoiler review on Scene-It Movie Reviews Episode 205

Review By: Spoiler Steve

Rating: 9/10